


I Don’t Regret That It’s You

by dread_thehalfhanded



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: But with sex, Canon Compliant, During Canon, Enemies to Lovers, Iorveth has a vag, M/M, PWP, Penis In Vagina Sex, That One Fight Scene, speedrun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded
Summary: Every sense strained on the Aen Seidhe before him: The mocking grin, the single glittering eye. He weighed every movement as the elf rolled his wrist, his slender, curved blade flowing in an unnecessary circle.Roche watched, calculating the breadth of each step, all his focus drawn into an edge keen enough to cut with.
Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
Comments: 9
Kudos: 80





	I Don’t Regret That It’s You

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all remember that super gay scene from W2? This one, in fact: https://youtu.be/pHNsKl5GStM. Yeah, me too. This is that, but with... more. 
> 
> So much of this dialogue is pulled verbatim from the game. Like, so much. Make of this what you will.

Fucking squirrel. Bastard whoreson elf.

Clearing too small for a proper fight, but it would do. Uneven ground, nekker nest not far to the left, probably abandoned if Geralt ever had time to do his actual job.

Vernon Roche drew his sword.

Every sense strained on the Aen Seidhe before him. The mocking grin, the single glittering eye. He weighed every movement as the elf rolled his wrist, his slender, curved blade flowing in an unnecessary circle. Roche watched, calculating the breadth of each step, all his focus drawn into an edge keen enough to cut with.

His mouth twitched with what passed for a smile these days. Live or die, after this it would be—over. All of it, another forest re-conquered for the good of Temeria, claimed again in the king’s name. And when Foltest set his mind to a thing… well, he brooked no argument.

Stepping forward, he raised his sword in the barely-polite salute that indicated he was ready—but Iorveth bore no such compunction. The elf swung quickly, immediately, the blade launched from the shoulder in a quick snap, and Roche parried at the last desperate second.

_Clang._

Shoulder shaking from the blow, he rolled into the motion with a grunt.

Finally. The woodland usurper would get what he deserved. As he had lorded it here, so he would fall.

_Clang._

They met again, and he stepped aside with the strike, drawing Iorveth’s sword down until the elf’s sneer matched his own.

Too close. Iorveth headbutted him without hesitation, a move which might have won him the fight instantly had that not also been Fenn’s favorite move. Roche knew better than to fall for that—never thought he’d be grateful for his team’s chronic lack of self-preservation.

Sliding backwards a half step only, Roche punished the lack of cover instantly with three quick cuts in succession—and the first two found their mark.

Stumbling back, Iorveth only barely covered the blind side of his face before the final hit, in no place to maintain his guard. Seizing the opportunity, Roche twisted suddenly, and with an underhanded strike punched up into Iorveth’s jaw on the other side—

_Clunk._

—and as Iorveth stumbled, he grabbed the elf’s sword wrist and pulled it to his own side. Unbalanced for once, Iorveth tumbled to the ground, numb fingers empty, a spring pulled past extension. 

Reflexively, Roche followed him down, blade pointed at his throat, though it trembled slightly. So fast, too fast.

All those years and it had taken only three, four exchanges to bring him down?

For a moment, he felt something like disappointed.

“Defeated by a Dh'oine,” spat the elf, sprawled in the dirt. “I must be getting old.”

One big eye flashed up at him, and even with the elf at his mercy, Roche felt the quiver of a prey animal that has been one too many times on the other end of things. But the fear seemed unfounded. Iorveth made no move to rise, just lay there in the grass, barely even panting.

“What now?”

An answer did not come immediately to mind. He should kill him. He would.

But he wondered at this strange, tall, slant-eared creature on the ground, so different from other elves he’d hunted—and a far cry from those that cowered, civilized, in human cities. Iorveth had always been more of a concept than a real, hot, living thing. A threat hurled, a bow pulled taut in the branches above his head—not this. Elves, and rumors of elves.

Yet here he was.

Crouching, Roche knelt to examine his prey more thoroughly, taking the right of the hunter at the end of his chase. Slender fingers, taut cheeks, and fluttering breath; he looked utterly incapable of the atrocities that hid behind that eye. Roche knew better.

He reached out with his left hand, and brushed hair away from the elf’s eye to see the defiance there, glaring up at him. Iorveth shivered at his touch, and in another life, he might have thought the elf lovely.

The thought did not come pleasantly. He shoved it aside.

“Consider yourself lucky,” he said aloud, gruff to cover his discomfort as he snatched his hand back, “Though you deserve torture, I lack the means.”

This was a lie—a professional can make do with whatever is at hand.

“So, I’ll simply lop off your head. You’ll die a warrior’s death.”

A shame. What he truly lacked was time. This Scoia'tael would have been the work of weeks, with the proud strength in every line of him. Iron, tongs, too crass for the fey thing. He would have tied him with silk, broken him with silver—

“I don’t regret a thing,” said Iorveth, snapping him out of it.

Proud, but foolish. Roche knew he could break him of that if given the chance.

“Impending death has addled your mind,” he growled.

He raised his sword, more out of habit than anything else. Something sudden and sad stirred in the elf’s gaze, lashes blinking heavy-lidded against his cheek.

“I don’t regret that it’s you.”

Roche froze, the blade ready. The words didn’t process for a moment, and rolled over and over between his ears like marbles. What was he saying? He stumbled backwards a step, and felt ashamed immediately after. You don’t get answers out of doomed men by letting them know your every thought.

The elf sighed, shaking his head, and still made no move to get up.

“I am old, Vernon. Older than I have any right to be.”

Iorveth leaned back and shut his single eye, the white column of his throat obscured only by the climbing vines that inked down into his gambeson. For a brief, perverse moment, Roche imagined following it, discovering rib by rib what else lay under all that cloth and mail.

“If anyone is to end me, you have earned it.”

Eye shut, throat bared, head thrown back—the innocence of the pose struck him, the purity of it. In his time under Foltest, he’d held sword, brand, and whip. He knew well the ways of flesh and bone, how to break a soldier before he could pray to his gods.

No one is every truly ready to die. He knew that better than most. Men and elves alike beg for mercy, at the end.

Except this one.

Iorveth’s pulse throbbed once, twice, and again, the living heart making itself known, and he fixed on it. Such a soft, small movement. So much life, that had endured so much, and yet he offered himself up for his own end.

He could not kill this creature, not now. Not here.

“Well? What, are you too coward to do it, even give me the dignity of a clean death?”

Paralyzed by the quick wind of his thoughts, Roche did not answer. Only when Iorveth started to scramble to his feet, he stumbled to stop him, pushing him over and down again onto the grass.

His hands grasped the thick forearms, bound in tight vambraces, with one thigh on either side of the elf’s torso. They struggled briefly, but the Aen Seidhe could get no leverage on the uneven ground, and Roche pushed down, down with his whole body, and the elf soon stopped struggling.

Foreheads nearly brushing, they might have been lovers, but for the bruises blooming along the elf’s cheek.

“Yield,” said Roche, unable to think of anything else appropriate to say in the situation.

Sweat dripped down from his neck onto the elf’s cheek, and he wrinkled his nose.

“What are you going to do,” he sneered, “Kill me? You had your chance. Must you humiliate me first? I would expect nothing less.”

He lay flat, still subdued. Tattered red bandana covering all of half his face, the hooked nose jutting out like a mountain peak—all of him craggy and untamed. Yet for all his bluster, he waited calmly. No defense, no protest, no gallant last stand. Simply at peace with whatever he might suffer at his hands.

Something about that turned a stone in Roche’s mind.

Gripping the elf’s forearms harder than he had need to in any circumstance, he looked down into the proud elf’s smoldering green eye, and kissed him. 

It was not a soft kiss, nor a kind one, with his eyes open and sweat between them. Shock swept the elf’s face, tense, pupils suddenly large and dark. He tasted… nice. Like sweet wine, and rich soil soft with rain, and crisp wind over treetops in the heat of summer—and Iorveth’s lips moved against his then and he couldn’t think of anything else.

His heart hammered against his ribs, and he lowered himself the last few inches to cover the elf with his chest, pressing closer and closer to chase that warm-earth smell that coiled around him.

In answer, Iorveth rolled his hips up against him, pressing up warm and welcoming, and Roche realized very suddenly that he was hard.

The elf’s cheeks flushed, and he turned his head to the side in something like shame, unable to meet Roche’s gaze. Grabbing his chin, Roche twisted his jaw back to face him and kissed him again and again, desperate for the smooth hot skin against his own.

This pure thing, this wild creature gentling itself for him, how could he not but take what he would from him?

Roche dipped his tongue into Iorveth’s mouth, and licked inside as he rolled his hips further down against the elf’s chainmail, the fabric between them sliding unevenly. Iorveth exhaled softly, and brought one hand up to cup the back of his head—and Roche let him, relaxing the pressure and only following the hand with his own to hold the elf’s wrist.

Sparks flew—literally—as their mail scraped together, and Roche grimaced. He rose off the elf only long enough to part his tunic and puddle his mail around his waist. Iorveth spread his legs, parting his own long gambeson enough to tuck Roche between his thighs and pull him tightly close with a hand at the small of his back.

Roche groaned at that, the hot, long-fingered hand gripping him with want. He’d long forgotten to hold onto those wrists, to keep him bound, restrained, against the ever-present possibility of a knife in the ribs.

Those cares seemed far away, like they belonged to another person. Here, now, he wrapped his hand gently around the wildly-beating feather pulse in the elf’s neck, and squeezed. The quick gasp he got from the elf hit him in the gut, heat warm through his veins, and he would have pressed harder had Iorveth not shaken his head, growling.

He stopped, blood pounding in his temples, behind his eyes.

“Tell me what you do want.”

When had this become about what Iorveth wanted?

“You.”

The elf rolled his hips up against Roche’s again, catching on his stiff cock, leaving little doubt what he meant.

Roche grunted. That he could do.

Running the pad of his thumb over the high cheekbones once more, he moved to unlace the elf’s trousers.

Roche stripped the strange, thin green fabric down just enough to fit himself between the folded legs again, and he got one good look at a series of drenched folds, with a slight protrusion like a thick clit before the elf was jerking his head away and pulling him close with both hands.

Instantly distracted, Roche groaned as the elf rubbed that hot wetness all over the front of his trousers, rutting up against his still-clothed cock. Vaguely, he was aware of the mess. More relevantly, he wanted closer to that soaking heat, but the elf seemed determined to have him right as he was.

Choking back a strangled sound as Iorveth grabbed a handful of his ass and pulled him painfully close, he scrabbled for his trouser ties.

“ _Wait_ , you bastard—”

He jerked out his cock, stiff and red and aching, and Iorveth huffed at him.

“No.”

He covered Roche’s hand and cock in his own, and pulled him towards his opening with a firm grasp that brooked no argument. Disinclined to argue, Roche went, and pushed into Iorveth with one firm, fluid thrust.

The pressure was intense, almost painful, but warm and wet and he could still move freely. Gasping, head thrown back, the elf clung to him, one hand pressed against his pubic bone, the other at the small of his back.

Roche groaned at the sight of the neck open again, and he leaned down to lick up the smooth skin as he rolled his hips, sinking further into his wetness. Iorveth shivered, and on the next, he sank his teeth in, carving the sign of his being there into the elf’s flesh.

He pulled out again, slowly, and Iorveth shivered in his arms, shaking like a brown leaf in autumn; clinging to the tree by a single stem. Thoughtlessly, Roche pulled the elf against himself to still him, one arm around his waist and the other holding them up. The elf wound one hand around the back of his neck and clung, still rocking his hips against him gently, encouraging him deeper.

Not that he needed it. Fully inside now, he thrust erratically, pressing his face into Iorveth’s neck, his hair, the scrape of the bandana against the rim of his nose a reminder that this was real. Slick melted around him, dripping from their joining, smeared over thighs, uniform, mail.

He felt afire, the rush of the victory, the quicker, greater thrill of this conquering hot in his veins. He wanted to taste, to claim, to have—and he did.

Long fingers pinched and clawed at the back of his neck, the curl of his hat now slipping, slipping as they moved together. Together, no longer two fiends stalking along each other’s trails, but one, one vicious thing clawing to completion.

The elf’s eyelashes fluttered closed, and he arched up, pulling Roche closer still with all the straining strength in him.

A strangled sound left his mouth, and a moment after Roche realized what that meant, Iorveth’s whole body shuddered, clenching around him slick and merciless.

Roche came, face buried against soft skin, panting out his want, his triumph all in a moment: he had no choice. Who could stand against such a tightness, a slender wanting laid out just for him? Too much for a man.

Gasping still, he came back to himself with the elf’s face against his own.

He kissed him again, for good measure. 

Slowly, the elf rolled to the side, and lay shaking for another moment more before shoving down his gambeson and glaring at Roche. As if that changed anything.

Roche just watched him go, the little pieces of hair that had escaped from his bandana, the high flush on his cheeks. Pretty, he thought, and it did not behoove him.

Still. What ever had?

Half staggering to his feet, Roche put himself to rights, sweeping mail into place and snatching up his sword from the grass. He sheathed it—little late for anything else now—and jammed the chaperone back into place before turning back to the elf.

Iorveth stood on the other side of the clearing, startlingly put-together for someone who had hit the dirt only a few minutes before. Color still stood out high on his sharp cheeks, but otherwise he looked as he ever had. Cold, aloof.

Shame he had to leave him like this. Shame he couldn’t do his duty, said a darker voice in the back of his mind.

“I defeated you once, Iorveth,” he said, voice catching. “And I can do it again, remember that.”

He turned to go, and Iorveth watched his blue-striped back disappear into the foliage, heard the press of his boots into the leaves as he went.

“We shall see about that, friend. We shall see.”


End file.
